Tools of War: M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge

Mines suck. You can't see them. Really bad things happen if you step on them or roll over them. Bad things that generally sound like "BOOOOOM!!!" ...generally. Chemical mines only let out a quiet hissing noise, and tend to save your eardrums so that you can hear the sounds of your own painful, drawn out, agonizing death. Yay...

So, there are several options that you have, once you have discovered the minefield:

A) Go around. Sounds great, but this is likely why the minefield exists in the first place. Minefields are often emplaced as a channeling tool, to get the enemy (you!) to approach through a predesignated kill zone. You know....where they have advantageous terrain, artillery pre-plots, emplaced heavy weapons, and fun stuff like that.

B) Move the mines. This can be accomplished the easy way, via heavy vehicles equipped with mine plows and/or rollers, or...if you don't happen to have any of those lying around...the hope-you-aren't-low-ranking-or-on-Top's-shit-list way, by crawling forward inch by inch, probing the ground with a little stick. The easy way is not too bad, but the cleared avenue of approach is pretty much limited to the width of those mine-plows/rollers. The other way is slow, tedious, scary as hell, and (since the area is probably being watched by an observer with access to his artillery batteries) likely to get you dead while clearing said minefield.

C) Blow the damn thing up. Hell, blowing things up is one of the reasons that a lot of folks join the military in the first place....might as well incorporate the Boom-factor into this task as well.

Back in WWI, the Bangalore torpedo (which is pretty much a bunch of explosive-filled pipe sections that were fitted together, pushed out into the minefield, and then detonated) was developed in order to clear barbed wire during those jolly, carefree and happy days of trench-warfare. [pause for fond memories of trenchfoot and disease] It was later adapted for use to clear a narrow path through a minefield. However, the limitations of having a narrow route of advance remained in effect.

Finally, some genius came up with a great idea: "What's better than a bunch of explosives? A bunch of explosives that has a ROCKET ATTACHED TO IT!!" I like how this guy thinks...

Thus was born the M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge (aka MICLIC). Vehicle or trailer mounted, it consists of an explosive-filled hose that is pulled across the minefield, clearing an 8m by 100m swath.

This little bit from the wiki entry cracked me up:

In the event a MICLIC fails to detonate normally, it can be manually activated by time-delay fuses every few feet along the length of it. Due to the inherent dangers of entering a live minefield to manually arm the backup fuses on a charge that could still detonate at any moment, possibly while under enemy fire as well, the act is jokingly referred to as the "Medal of Honor run".

Here's the MICLIC doing its thing...






By: Steve